Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

Monday, March 20, 2017

It
is impossible for anyone to write a perfectly rationally argued
document without a segment that, out of context, can be transformed by
some dishonest copywriter to appear totally absurd and lend itself to
sensationalization, so politicians, charlatans and, more disturbingly,
journalists hunt for these segments. “Give me a few lines written
by any man and I will find enough to get him hung” goes the saying
attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand, a vicious censor during
the French revolution phase of terror, and a few others. As Donald Trump
said “The facts are true, the news is fake” –ironically at a press
conference in which he suffered the same selective reporting as my RSA
event. (Read more.)

2 comments:

And, currently, with high tech expertise they can parse his statements, cut and paste to create something that is not a real statement. During the campaign I would run into people who claimed Trump had made statements declaring this or that....I would challenge them on it but they insisted they heard it coming right from his mouth. It was then I realized it had been a cut and paste fake news item. This sort of thing has caused actual fear in people who have been made to believe Trump is going to take actions against them based on some twisted news release.

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